By James Rankin, March 20, 2007
Boris Red plugs into more than 20 editing applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, and Avid's line of NLEs. Red 4.1 supports new hosts, including AVX2 for Avid, Boris 844X and Media 100, Canopus Edius 4, Sony Vegas 7, and Apple Final Cut Pro on Intel-based Macs. Designed also for motion graphics artists (Adobe After Effects is another host), the new version features new Paint tools as well as flexible 2D and 3D titling tools, which have the ability to extrude and animate vector objects and paths.
Productivity
Seasoned Red users will notice the tool's new interface right away. Of the new enhancements, top features include Sticky Windows and customizable buttons. You can now resize any window without losing visibility of critical information in any of the other windows. Duration, Keyframe, and Time have been rearranged on the timeline and are also available in the Composite window, which can be very useful when you're using Red in a multiple-monitor configuration. You can choose your own button highlight colors and even rearrange them to suit your work style.
On previous versions, the Controls window automatically updated according to which features the user chose--subsequently hiding many of the feature tabs. To access the hidden tabs, you had to drag tabs back and forth or stretch the window. In version 4.1, the feature tabs automatically appear in multiple rows, so all of the tabs are always visible.
The keyframe interpolation parameters previously located in Preferences have a new home in the Options palette. The new arrangement improves productivity by making it easier to change parameters while viewing the results in the Composite window at the same time. The Options palette includes controls for Vector Trace, Spline Tools, Grids and Guides, Keyframe, Timecode, and Keyframe Generator.
Another enhancement to the Project window provides thumbnails of all imported media. You can sort by name, length (duration), type, and size. You'll find the thumbnails very handy when working with large groups of images--you have much better control over placing items into your timeline. One of the more outstanding features of Red over some of its competitors is that users have the ability to directly import footage into the timeline, either with shortcut buttons or by right-clicking in a blank space in the timeline and choosing New Media. You're able to select and import only one item at a time using this method. If you wish to import multiple items at one time into a project, it's still necessary to use the File>Import option. This places the footage into the Project window and then you can drag the footage into the timeline as needed.
The new paint clone and image-based brushes provide additional creative options. Cloning from alternate tracks isn't immediately intuitive, but it works well once you get the hang of it. You can also use an individual layer in a Photoshop file as input to the brush stroke. Painting with moving footage yields some very interesting results.
The ability to use motion tracking to guide the clone tool practically automates certain rotoscoping functions. In addition, the new paint tool (when used along with lighting effects) can create effects similar to the animated glowing lines often seen flowing through commercials and music videos. Each paint track generates a separate subtrack for each new color, clone, spray, or roller paint stroke. This gives you plenty of design options by providing control of the start and ending time of individual strokes within a single paint track. You even can simulate 3D ribbon effects with the roller. With Red 4.1's path tools, it's easy to create a true animated 3D ribbon that actually follows a path.
New filters
Earlier versions of Red had too few filters. Boris has addressed that concern in Red 4.1 with the addition of several new effects, including select Boris Continuum Complete (BCC) and Final Effects Complete (FEC) filters (there are 164 new filters in all). Red 4.1 includes new color and blur filters such as Color Chocker, Color Palette, and RGB Blend. Other effects filters include Turbulence, Film Process, Misalignment, Drizzle, Glass, and Hair.
Red 4.1 also includes two new optical flow-based filters: Motion Key and Optical Stabilizer. To test the Optical Stabilizer, I used a clip from an old Boris Red demo CD--handheld camera footage of a guy running wildly through a parking lot. While you can adjust the parameters for smoothing, cropping, edge handling, and even keyframable scaling of the image being stabilized, the default settings yield impressive results.
Anyone working with interlaced footage will really appreciate the Degrain and Deinterlace filters. I could apply them with ease and found them both to be effective and fast. The Degrain and Deinterlace filters contain a number of useful parameters that allow easy tweaking to get professional results. Other new filters include wipes and light effects.
The Motion Key filter lets you isolate a moving object, remove it from the foreground, and fill in the pixels with the background image. Like all plugins, the degree of success may vary somewhat depending on the footage. Generating production-quality results requires some tweaking. Optical Stabilizer works without the need for or the limitations of traditional tracking tools.
Conclusion
The new enhancements, especially the added filters and improved interface, make Boris Red 4.1 worth the upgrade. If you own Boris Red 3 and have already purchased BCC 4, you may already own many of the new filters. You'll want to compare the new features to your work requirements to determine whether the upgrade is really for you. If you're new to Boris Red, you'll find it a welcome addition to your toolkit.
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